"Bass Twelve (2013 Mix)" [mp3 moved to Bandcamp]
This quasi-old-school house track was done in '09 and remixed in '12 for a monaural YouTube version (since removed).
This version is a bit punchier (louder, at least) and adds a new theme at the end. Not being mono means all the exciting stereo panning of the bass line is back.
Joel Cook (aka Frankhats on dump.fm) has added another 1000 icons to his icon page, discussed last fall (new link, new server). [Updated link, 2018]
A recap on the method, from Cook:
Originally I started collecting what I thought could be used as avatars on a web project I was fooling around with (mainly following a tutorial for using pubnub messaging). The idea was to give each new user a random avatar with no username. At the time it was a chat site with nothing hooked up (no history, no system for users, messages just got pushed to any open browser, chaotic), and I was liking the anonymous aspect... but I have moved on to a more fleshed out idea and haven't tried to "finish" the weird hack I was playing with.
Images are not optimized, only forced not to exceed certain dimensions with css. The php script lists every image in the directory and spits it onto the page, and I keep adding to it [currently 2468 images, 145mb --tm]... There are a few broken images and duplicates probably, oh well.
A recap on the theory: it's "image aggregating," but more thoughtfully chosen and, at the same time, Dadaist, than the pedestrian, rote lumping-together of subject matter conjured by that term. It may have loose connections to '60s-'70s conceptual art through a kind of systematic thinking but otherwise it's something different we're wrestling with here. And whereas many institutionally-validated "net artists" make work that resembles what you expect internet art to be, Cook's project squares more with what the net actually is -- vulgar, funny, and beyond the scope of any single artist genius coming out of art school.
swoop, AGT528, and grass all appear in the original filename. I enlarged the purple glop at some point. Success has many parents but glopface is an orphan.
It's funny watching Google struggle to keep its classic search interface pristine. A bar had been gradually growing across the top as new products such as YouTube were added to the dynasty. Then a couple of days ago the slate was wiped in favor of a small discreet grid which took you to all those services. That obviously went over big so now text is creeping back in the form of links to the popular "Images" and the "G+" Facebook imitation. Which will be next to return? Our vote is for "Translate" even though it wasn't there originally.
Speaking of Google, the Wikipedians have some unkind words about Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's tenure at Novell:
Novell's decline and loss of market share accelerated under Eric Schmidt's leadership, with Novell experiencing industry-wide decline in sales and purchases of NetWare and a drop in share price of $40.00/share to $7.00/share under Eric Schmidt's leadership.
specifically
Analysts commented that the primary reason for Novell's demise was linked to its channel strategy and mismanagement of channel partners under Eric Schmidt's leadership. Under Ray Noorda's leadership, Novell provided upgrades to resellers and customers in the same packaging as a newly purchased copy of NetWare, but at one third the cost, which created a "gray market" that allowed NetWare resellers to sell upgrades as newly purchased NetWare versions at full price periodically which Novell intentionally did not track. Ray Noorda commented to several analysts he devised this strategy to allow front line resellers to "punch through" the distributors like Tech Data and Ingram and acquire NetWare versions at a discounted rate where Novell "looked the other way" then allowed them to sell these versions as newly purchased NetWare versions in order to pay the Novell Field Support Technicians Salaries who for the most part were employees who worked for the front line resellers as Novell CNE (Certified NetWare Engineers).
Noorda commented that this strategy was one he learned as an executive at General Electric when competing against imported home appliances, allow the resellers to "make more money off your product than someone else's". Eric Schmidt embarked on a disastrous strategy to remove the upgrades as whole box products without understanding Novell's channel dynamics, then directed Novell's general counsel to initiate litigation against a large number of Novell resellers who were routinely selling upgrades as newly purchased NetWare versions. Although this move bolstered Novell's revenue numbers for several quarters, Novell's channels subsequently collapsed with the majority of Novell's resellers dropping NetWare for fear of litigation.
Yet, in their article on Schmidt the Wikipedians tell us that
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him, they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.
This is called failing upwards, right?
from Quartz/The Atlantic, a listicle titled "The complete history of Twitter as told through tortured descriptions of it in the New York Times." This is just 2006-2008:
“…a blogging-like tool for quick updates”
—November 24, 2006“…a new, free communications service”
—April 22, 2007“This short-messaging service allows you to ‘micro-blog’ your life in 140 character bursts.”
—November 29, 2007“The micro-blogging service…”
—December 28, 2007“…one of a number of so-called microblogging services”
—January 21, 2008“…a group-messaging application”
—February 14, 2008“…the instant messaging service”
—February 25, 2008“…the Web site Twitter, where users write small blogs called microblogs”
—March 2, 2008“…'lifecasting' services like Twitter”
—May 4, 2008“…a service that enables subscribers to electronically (and almost instantaneously) broadcast what they’re doing”
—May 1, 2008“…the mass text-messaging service that sends out short ‘tweets’”
—November 15, 2008“…a Web messaging and social networking site that is itself known for frequent downtime”
—July 6, 2008“…another social networking site best described as a micro blog”
—July 8, 2008“…a messenging service that lets people send updates of 140 characters about what they are doing or thinking to the mobile phones of people who sign up to receive the constant stream”
—August 2, 2008“…the social-networking service that allows users to send out brief messages — “tweets” — to large groups of friends via cellphone”
—August 3, 2008“…a Web site and messaging service that allows its two-million-plus users to broadcast to their friends haiku-length updates”
—September 7, 2008“…a hyperspeed form of blogging in which you write about your life in bursts of 140 characters or fewer, including spaces and punctuation marks”
—September 21, 2008“…which lets users send short messages with updates on what they are doing, is popular with a tech-savvy crowd but crashes frequently and has not figured out a way to earn significant revenue.”
—September 22, 2008“…the short-message communication service”
—September 30, 2008
How about "A place to publicly jot down random but reasonably well-phrased BS that may or may not have anything to do with one's life or activities."
